Repertory

(Shown on film and video): Named for the first movie production studio, designed by Thomas Edison, this annual festival swings by the Ambler (and the County later this month) with a set of short films ranging from experimental to narrative, from documentary to animation. Thurs., March 20, 7pm.

The Iron Giant

(1999) (Shown on DVD): After The Simpsons but before The Incredibles and Ratatouille, Brad Bird was beloved by a significantly smaller group of people for this expert Cold War-era block of cel animation. Vin Diesel voices the clunky E.T.-esque beast. B+ Sat., March 22, 11am.

(Shown on film): The trophy went to Suze Templeton's miserablist take on Peter & the Wolf, but it should've gone to Madame Tutli-Putli, a wordless poetic/existentialist portrait of one increasingly odd train ride. Wed., March 19, 7pm.

How to Eat Fried Worms

(2006) (Shown on DVD): Thomas Rockwell's kiddie fave, first published all the way back in 1973, made a super-belated graduation to film form--the most interesting part of which appears to be a score by Devo's Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh. (Not reviewed.) Sat., March 22, 11am.

Sweet Mud

(2006) (Shown on film): Shown as part of the Israeli Film Festival, Dror Shaul's grim drama tells of a boy torn between his kibbutz and his mother, whom the kibbutz has denounced. Opens with bovine-performed fellatio, if you must know. (Not reviewed.) Sun., March 23, 7pm.

Pierrot le Fou

(1965) (Shown on film): Jean-Luc Godard's finest moment was debatably this delirious pop pastiche, in which a gutter-noir plot--Jean-Paul Belmondo runs from gangsters with fatale Anna Karina--serves as the basis for Brechtian gags, political jabs, melancholy brooding, musical numbers, pastoral loveliness and loud bursts of 'Scope color (including a party scene presented in various tints). Not to mention the best ending shy of George Romero's Martin. A Wed., March 26, 7pm.

(1941) (Shown on film): The same year they made Sergeant York, Howard Hawks and Gary Cooper atoned with this spot-on screwball, with Cooper as the dorky head of a group of dorky lexicographers working on a dictionary of slang and Barbara Stanwyck as the mafia moll who wins his heart. A Tues., March 25, 7:30pm.